$321 million social investment package
The Government has made a number of announcements today, mainly focused on a $321 million spending commitment on social investment to help the most disadvantaged families. Details are:
- $321 million for social investment initiatives
- $28 million for a national roll out of Family Start
- $35 million for an expansion of behavioural services for young children
- $6 million for a new programme to support pre-school children with oral language needs and literacy difficulties
- New Better Public Services targets including
- 90% of pregnant women to be registered with a lead maternity carer in their first trimester, up from 65%
- Reducing the number of hospitalisations for children 12 and under with preventable conditions
- Improving the literacy and numeracy of children – focusing on higher achievement of students in year 8
- Reducing the number of serious crime victims by 10,000
- Achieving a 20 per cent reduction in the time it takes to house priority clients on the social housing register.
The nice thing about this package, is it has obviously been driven by the research about what issues indicate a bad outcome for kids. So rather than just increase spending haphazardly, they are targeted at what seems to matter most:
- Pregnant mothers not getting medical advice and support
- untreated behavioural issues in young kids
- young kids with communication issues
- preventable hospitalisations
- literacy and numeracy